Nazi past haunts Austrian presidential vote

AUSTRIA: ’’This election is all about the refugees,’’ Thomas Hadorits said, as an icy December wind rattled the door of his village shop.

‘‘If it weren’t for the refugees, that guy wouldn’t stand a chance.’’

Outside, an election poster for Norbert Hofer was swaying in the wind. Austria goes to the polls today to choose a new president, a vote pitting Hofer, of the far-right Freedom Party (FP), against Alexander van der Bellen, a former economics professor endorsed by the Green Party. None of the established parties made it past the first round.

If Hofer wins, he will become the first far-right head of state in the history of the European Union and the first the continent has seen since the death of Franco in 1975.

It has been a long, hard journey to this point for Hofer, who almost won the first of 2016’s great populist upsets in May.

He started celebrating when the exit polls showed he had won the presidency, only to have victory denied him when the final tally showed he had lost to van der Bellen by just 31,000 votes.

But in a surprise twist, the courts annulled the result after irregularities in counting postal votes emerged, and ordered a rerun.

The latest polls are on a knife edge, but Hofer is the narrow favourite.

The story of how Austria reached this point lies in the windswept plains on the border with Hungary. The villages here are Hofer’s new stronghold, although few of the residents would call themselves far-right.

In the last general election, in 2013, the Centre-left Social Democrat party (SP) won more than 50 per cent of the vote in some of the villages. But that was before the refugees came through.

For a few weeks last year, this part of Austria appeared on television screens around the world, as asylum seekers spilled across the Hungarian border.

Villagers opened up their homes to offer showers to the refugees, and donated old clothes. But something has since changed.

In the first, aborted presidential vote, Hofer won more than 74 per cent of the vote here.

‘‘I don’t think it has anything to do with the other issues people talk about, like unemployment,’’ Hadorits said.

‘‘It’s because of the refugees he’s there. People are afraid of the refugees, because they fear for their own welfare and security.’’

- Telegraph Group

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES Demonstrators participate in what organisers call the first ‘‘F*ck Hofer’’ protest march through the city centre to voice their opposition to Austrian Right-wing populist presidential candidate Norbert Hofer.